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Why Some Parents Are Refusing To Make Their Kids Do Homework

Homework is a regular part of the routine children engage in while attending school.

Some parents complain that their children aren’t being assigned enough homework by their teachers. Other parents feel that their children are being assigned too much. The question for the latter scenario is how much homework is too much?

Amy Joyce, a writer for The Washington Post wrote an interesting article that was published yesterday (August 26th) titled, ‘”Too much homework? Some parents are just opting out.” Joyce is also the editor of the On Parenting column from The Post.

For her article, Joyce conducted a series of interviews with a number of parents and children on the issue of excess homework. Parents expressed the challenges of having to help their children with lengthy homework packets and helping them engage in recreation and other non-education related activities.

One parent named Jeanne Hargett said that she stopped requiring her son (who started kindergarten last year) to do homework altogether. “We just didn’t do it,” Hargett said in her interview with The Post.

“Honestly, he’s an active child. And I really feel like after asking him to sit on his bottom for most of the day, and asking him to come home and do it again, is not fair. I want him to go outside and exercise, look at bunnies and bugs and crawl around in the grass,” she continued.

Hargett’s son was being sent home with lengthy homework packets that were due every week. She believes that putting an increased amount of pressure on small children to do the same amount of work at home that is assigned at school hinders their ability to experience other things that are essential to life.

This is another reason why homeschooling is a growing trend with American parents. As a home school parent, you have the ability to be in full control of how your child balances school work and their own unique childhood experience that every child is entitled to have.

Academics is very important. However, a healthy balance of recreation and other mediums for children to explore their abilities has to be maintained.